Friday, 29 August 2014

Zettelwirtschaft

﻿

Whilst in Berlin I discovered a word, a German compound word to be exact. Now, usually I'm rather suspicious of these, but zettelwirtschaft seems to me admirably useful. Zettelwirtschaft means disorder or chaos amongst pieces of paper.

That's a very useful word, especially in the way that Germans seem to usually use it - ein zettelwirtschaft haben - to have a zettelwirtschaft going on. But it can just be a noun used to describe top of my desk.

It's also rather mysterious etymologically. Zettel is plain enough, it means paper. And schaft is just the German equivalent of -ness or -ship or -hood. It makes it a state of being. But wirt...

Well here I must admit that my German is rather basic, but so far as my dictionaries tell me, wirt is either a verb meaning to host, or it's a noun meaning innkeeper. And wirtschaft means pub or tavern (or sometimes economy, for some weird reason). So zettel-wirt-schaft means paper-tavern-ness.

I suppose that works, the slips of paper cavorting like drunks in a bar at midnight. Indeed, I hope that's the explanation, but it does seem rather odd. Are there any German experts out there who can come up with something better?

Wirtschaft most commonly means "Economy," which etymologically means "management of material or household resources." Not a stretch to understand that the management of paper usually results in a total mess.

I would agree with Stefan Klöckner - a Zettelwirtschaft is what you have on a desk with many pieces of paper yet unfiled. I love Zettelwirtschafts. Occasionally I retrieve a letter (wonderful) or invoice (not so wonderful) I had totally forgotten about. A little organized non-filing system, mail, invoices, adds etc. strewn all over a desk, can be called a Zettelwirtschaft, and in this context Wirtschaft has nothing to do with "tavern", unless you would want to go there to drown your displeasure with your non-organized desk.

"Zettel" in this case does not have the meaning of "piece of paper". In the word Zettelwirtschaft, "zettel" has the meaning of "confusing" or "creating a mess". That's an old medieval word that used to have the meaning of "dispersing". So instead of focusing on some work, we are dispersing, losing focus.

"wirtschaft" is not the tavern here. It's meaning is "working something". In German, you would "wirtschaft" a farm. So, the compound name stands for "working without any plan".

Clearly, the tavern is out. Michael Klemm’s comment on ‘zettel’ probably deserves some more scrutiny. I don’t think there is a word ‘zettel’ meaning ‘confusing’ (sounds like Michael assumes an adjective). However, it’s possible that originally the ‘zettel’ in ‘Zettelwirtschaft’ does come from the word ‘zettel’ that Michael seems to have in mind. It is unrelated to the other word Zettel paper but refers to threads of a fabric and as a verb (zetten ?) means ‘spread out’, ‘strew’, ‘scatter’, as Michael seems to suggest. I doubt many speakers of German even know this word. But it’s fossilised in ‘sich verzetteln’, which, which means ‘to get caught up in something’ (usually detail) and is close in meaning to ‘confused’. Notwithstanding this possible origin of the ‘zettel’ part of ‘Zettelwirtschaft’, my sense is that in contemporary German it is clearly associated with the other word ‘Zettel’, meaning ‘piece of paper’. I’ve never heard it used in any sense unrelated to paper. (Incidentally, I am asking myself if the Zettel’s Latin origin, schedula [literally ‘leaf’] > cedula >> Zettel [>> Engl. ‘schedule’], could be related to the wonderful cognates ‘science’ and ‘shit’, as explained in the Etymologicon. The Greek origin schídē, meaning ‘splinter’, seems to open up this possibility, as I suspect it could reate to ‘to shed’. But then I don’t even know Greek.) ‘Wirtschaft’ indeed goes all the way from ‘busying oneself’ (‘busy-ness’, as it were) to ‘business/enterprise’ (in some parts of Germany maybe also ‘farm’, but definitely ‘pub/tavern/inn/hostel’) and eventually ‘economy’ in the broadest sense. I believe most contemporary speakers of German understand the ‘Zettelwirtschaft’ as referring to a kind of busy-ness (messing about) with lots of (pieces of) paper. It doesn’t have to take place on your desk. Whenever/wherever people have to fill in lots of forms, they like to complain about all that ‘Zettelwirtschaft’.

Having lived in Germany for 30 years, your post got me thinking, and researching. Wirtschaft does come from Wirt – a host. Hence the name for a pub/eatery.

Its second meaning, economy/business, would seem to have evolved from the idea of “running a household“ (with all its expense and income). But Zettelwirtschaft does not really go back to either of these two meanings. I dug a bit deeper, and in Duden (Germany’s “go-to” dictionary), I discovered a third meaning – “a way of working“ – in a derogatory sense.

This tallies with other uses of Wirtschaft(en) I have heard. Any German noun ending in –schaft is feminine by the way (so eine Zettelwirtschaft haben). And while on the subject of woody compound German nouns: I love Eselsbrücke – a donkey’s bridge, meaning a mnemonic. Which is not only more entertaining, it is also much easier to pronounce (well, for Germans).

Taste the Elements of Eloquence

The Horologicon is out in America

The Horologicon is a book of the strangest and most beautiful words in the English language arranged by the hour of the day when you will really need them. Words for breakfast, for commuting, for working, for dining, for drinking and for getting lost on the way home. It runs from uhtceare (sadness before dawn) to curtain lecture (a telling off given by your spouse in bed). It's out all over the world and you can buy it from these lovely people: